CORBA Vs Web Services

I came across this nice article bringing out the clear details about CORBA and Web Services. One of the best articles that I came across so far on this topic

Testing Private Methods

There are a lot of discussion going on in test infected community on how to go about testing private methods. One of the suggested approach is to nest a static test class within the production class. This package level access static class can be called from our testing class, which in turn would call the private methods.

I strongly disagree with this method. Couple of reasons:

1. We would be adding extra code in the production code.
2. It might add more cost to the customer

First we have to understand that, the reason why we want to test the application is to ensure that our application works well and conforms to certain requirements given by the customer. We need to weigh the cost of maintaining these tests also. Customer pays money for the product, and the testing is the extra burden we are putting on the customer to ensure we deliver something right.

When we deliver the nested class with the production code, we are in fact sending something that was not requested by the customer. This class in turn might introduce its own defect.

Let us take a simple analogy, process of car manufacturing. Consider that the testing team inserts a device into the car during car manufacturing. This device would ensure that they can test "engine temperature" accurately. This device would go with the car to the customer also. Problem here is, we may not know the impact of this device on mileage of the car !!. Even though it has made the lives of developers easy, we are charging the customer for this device too.

I strongly feel that, if we want to test something, we should do so without touching the production code.

Document style Vs RPC

Here is a good introduction bringing out the difference between RPC Vs document style web services